


The Flicker of a Flame

by MissS



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M, Permanent Injury, Unrequited Love, implied Anakin/Padme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:53:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23158852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissS/pseuds/MissS
Summary: But it will always be there, in the darkest of nights, in the sand that collects in his boots, in the flicker of a flame. He has burned before, and he burns still.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 4
Kudos: 43





	The Flicker of a Flame

**Author's Note:**

> Just something I had sitting around in a file, I find it really easy to think of situations from Obi-Wan's perspective and tend to get easily lost in imagining what might be running through his mind. I don't have these beta'd and I haven't written anything really for Star Wars, but hopefully you enjoy the product of me letting myself indulge in some angst :)

There’s a troop transport touching down outside the hangar, Obi-Wan can see it out of the corner of his eye, clones pouring out lead by Senator Amidala. He can almost taste the relief in his mouth because even if Padmé is the last thing his apprentice needs, Anakin is lying on the ground with his chest heaving and eyes wide, doing his best not to look like he’s at all alarmed that the majority of his right arm is laying halfway across the hanger. In some ways Obi-Wan is grateful for his own wounds, for if he had been able to stand with ease he knows he would have certainly shirked his duties to assist Yoda in attempting to apprehend Dooku.

He would have put Anakin first, because he’s missing his fucking arm, and for a moment he wonders if this is harder for him than it is for Anakin. He knows that in this day and age, limbs are replaceable, and like anything mechanical thing that Anakin touches it will soon become an extension of him as if it were flesh and blood. But Obi-Wan has never had the aptitude Anakin has for mechanical things, still feels foreign in the cockpit of a starfighter, and while Anakin will become comfortable with the loss of his arm…Obi-Wan isn’t sure he will. 

Obi-Wan does his best to remain civilized, to emulate the model of what a Jedi should be. He can recite the code in his sleep, and those who haven’t seen him with a weapon would likely imagine him as one of those Jedi who spend more time discussing the theological aspects of their order than honing combat skills. But under that smooth shell, that unruffled exterior, is a man who burns at injustice. A boy who struggled to control himself, now a man, who sometimes still struggles with that control in the face of injustice. And life, by all accounts, has been most unjust to Anakin Skywalker, in his heavily biased opinion. 

He remembers resisting Qui-Gonn’s insistence that they free Anakin and take him from Tatooine as one of their own. In retrospect he’s certain Qui-Gonn knew the way his apprentice burned at the injustice of slavery and the harsh realities of children born into such a life, and knew Obi-Wan would quickly bend to his wishes. His master had been wise in that way, and often had infuriated Obi-Wan in the way that he knew him so well. But he had spent the better portion of his life channeling that fire into order, peace, and through that, justice. It worked, most of the time, it allowed him to break the chains of slaves and rescue innocent beings from the clutches of evil. That control is what made him a Jedi, and it was being a Jedi that allowed him to do all those things. But not today, today there’s a foreign burning in his chest that doesn’t come from the lightsaber burns he suffers from, and the only thing that holds him back from rising and going to the young Jedi’s aid is the hope in Anakin’s eyes when he sees the senator from Naboo rushing toward him.

If he wasn’t worried out of his mind and his apprentice wasn’t missing an arm, if this had all gone to plan, he would be complimenting Anakin right now. Because in contrast to Dooku’s classic elegance, Anakin showed himself to be a hurricane. Boisterous, on the borderline of uncontrollable, brimming with power. Like a starfighter crash or a natural disaster, a struggle to tear your gaze from. Not nearly as precise and calculated as Dooku’s strikes and parries, but the savage beauty of the swirling blue blade around his body couldn’t have been ignored, a young prodigy versus a master dualist. Obi-Wan himself was a master of control and careful strategy, not much for showmanship, and while he admonished it in his apprentice he also quietly admired it. He was beautiful to watch. But he had lost, more than just the match, and Obi-Wan would have been proud if it hadn’t ended the way it did, with him hobbling after Anakin and Padmé. Anakin has wiped the sheer agony off his face and it’s replaced by a slight grimace, as he is supported on his uninjured side by the woman Obi-Wan knows he dreams about. He’s strong for her, Obi-Wan realizes, and in this moment he will blame his injuries on the way his mind is wandering and almost allow himself to be smug, because she won’t ever see the agony and the truth on Anakin’s face the way Obi-Wan does. The way he gets to.

He’s seen Anakin in heaven and hell, he’s seen the way his teeth grit at the sting of a shot from the training remote, during his early lightsaber training. He’s seen the peaceful look on his face and the tension that leaves his shoulders, ever broadening in the time Obi-Wan has known him in the timeless way that boys turn into men, as he tinkers with the protocol droid that he assures Obi-Wan is no longer his. And as the war began to boil over, he has seen Anakin’s scars and the wounds that made them, seen the way he curses under his breath as he patches up his own wounds, the breadth of his vocabulary speaking to the verbal abuse one takes during a childhood spent in slavery. Seen the way Anakin smiles warmly when they stumble across a group of younglings practicing on their way to deliver a report to the council after a mission, and the mischievous tone in Anakin’s voice that he hears echoing through the maintenance hangers when he comes to steal Anakin away from the company of the Temple’s mechanics, covered in smears of grease and coveralls that he seems far more comfortable in than his usual robes.

Seen the disbelief on his face in the moment Dooku severed his arm from his body, the sheen of sweat on his brow and the way his blood boils under his skin as his heart rate spikes and his pupils dilate in the dim light of the hanger where he lays at Obi-Wan’s feet and begins to go into shock, the way his mouth opens soundlessly because there just aren’t enough curses to mend a brutal amputation.

Obi-Wan knows that this will not be the last hardship Anakin endures, knows in his gut that this is just the beginning of something bigger than them. And he wonders if maybe, beyond that fire of injustice that’s raging in his chest, something else might be lurking. Because as they step onto the troop transport, and a trooper he thinks he knows (a common problem when your coworkers all share the same face) drapes a survival blanket around him and apologizes for the less than luxurious ride, he feels the tight grip of something that can only be described as jealousy.

He tries to tell himself that the way he discourages Anakin’s unspoken but obvious attachment to Padmé is just apart of his job as Anakin’s teacher, attachment is forbidden, he’s just looking out for him. But as he watches Anakin in the arms of the woman he loves, her hand running along his back and the way it makes his apprentice’s brow smooth as he relaxes into her touch, he knows there is something else. In that moment, the battle he faces is greater than any he has faced in months. Because he will let them have this moment, to see the pain wiped off of Anakin’s face, and he will struggle to breathe as he watches, wishing it was his hands that took away the pain. And he will keep burning.

/

Now it’s Anakin who is burning.

Not Anakin, heaving a sob as he corrects himself for the first time, but Lord Vader. All of Mustafar is burning and the scent has flooded his nostrils since the moment he arrived, since the moment he strode down the ramp to see someone he knew so well and not at all choking an innocent woman on a mercy mission. Choking the mother of his child, Obi-Wan amends to himself, a shiver running down his back. Now the scent is mixed with the cloying odour of burning flesh, and he can not look away. He wants to remember this, remember the moment he lost Anakin Skywalker. The moment he lost his friend, his brother, the moment they were both burning. Because Obi-Wan loved him, loves him, too much to kill him. To much to see this through. And though it all makes him sick and he’s sure he can taste bile in the back of his throat over the ashes in his mouth, he would rather take every one of Anakin’s limbs from him over again if he didn’t have to run him through. Didn’t have to watch the amber in his eyes fade to blue, and then close. He always thought he would go before Anakin, but he knows now he was wrong.

“I hate you!” comes roaring from Anakin’s lips, and Obi-Wan truly breaks. Because there is no universe where Anakin Skywalker could hate him, he knows it in his gut. He knows now that this is Vader, that Anakin is truly lost. And so he speaks truthfully, because he knows they are both damned.

“You were my brother, Anakin. I loved you.”

He clutches the hilt of Anakin’s lightsaber in his hand, his gaze lingering as the flames engulf the newly minted Sith apprentice at his feet. Engulfs the body he once stood beside, fought beside, the body that held the soul of someone who knew him often better than he knew himself. Of a man he could have loved, wrongfully, shamefully, but wholeheartedly. He has heard enough today to tear his heart apart, and so he can not continue to look as his screams begin, and he turns from all that remains of him. The hilt of his friend’s lightsaber is warm in his grasp, surely from the hellish heat of Mustafar…but he clutches it a little tighter, as if feeling the last of Anakin’s lingering touch.

As he walks away, the planet’s hot breath drying the tears on his cheeks, Obi-Wan knows he will relive this moment a thousand times in the years to come. He will try and fail to explain to Yoda how he could not kill Vader while he wore the face of a friend, he will see star systems fall to their knees under the hand of the Empire and he will shoulder the blame for those deaths. Because Obi-Wan used to burn for him, and even now he has lied, because he thinks he burns for him still. Perhaps how Obi-Wan feels about Anakin will come and go, like a smoke signal, as it haunts him on a sandy planet that he chooses for himself. No, chose for himself, years before. But it will always be there, in the darkest of nights, in the sand that collects in his boots, in the flicker of a flame.


End file.
